Monday, July 25, 2016

Six straight nights up at the wine bar, four of them by myself. Friday, all by myself, busboy. Saturday, same thing. Sunday night, no busboy. Monday, some help. Tuesday, alone, no busboy. Wednesday, some help. Jazz night complicates things intensely. I'm the last to leave.

Two days off. Unable to get moving in the afternoon.

As he lay there, tired, adjusting to the medicine, not having to go into work, he had the sensation as if below his breastbone in that energy center of intersections there was something like a box, a small cubicle chest, and that in it there were the physical memories of a particular person, a young woman from some time ago, that each and everyone of his dealings with had somehow tickled him, entering him. The times, the circumstances, the words that happen, the events that can happen, they might not quite reflect the gut physical reaction. Human, one might even act logically contrary to the wishes of the inner body and nervous system. But that small chest full of the sensations that built upon each other had gave meaning, that was always there too, and required of him a reaction, such as would come out involuntarily, a voice cracking, the sound of the voice as it reacts to her action, a tonal musical quality which is uncontrolled, like the octave of a vessel being filled with water. There was not anything he could do about this, about that center, like a chakra, of gut reaction to her person. It had all happened at a vulnerable time anyway. One of the last times after being where she was, he had vomited.

That was the thing within, that he had no power over, even as he tried to turn from it, escape from that which resided under his breastplate in a small central chamber. There was not anything he could do about it now, but live with it, under some form of Buddhist philosophy, passive, accepting, the wiser for knowing a physical truth.

Working at the bar had been an effort along such lines. A way of trying to distract himself.

Shakespeare. Shakespeare. He understood that people needed to talk, and that, also, and very importantly, people could be geniuses at it, and do great and almost infinitely--taking in dark matter and dark energy--gifted highly intelligent things of great compass. Such that when a political convention comes along--I mean, just to use the example, because that example is now highly present--one could each, within his own his or her self, come up with good and vital things to say, things worth listening to, things built on the shoulders of a million disparate dreams that happen to us in our sleep, and that come out, meaning something, unknown to us, but a process. I could speaking at that convention. This is what I would add.

Thus, now, the possibility and popularity of certain mediums. And one can take the event of a political convention and understand it in terms of meaning, maybe symbolic meaning, well, of course.

The leanness, the lack of anything superfluous, observed by Amherst College President, host to JFK's October, 1963 visit, Calvin Plimpton... And he, JFK, was one of the great speakers here and now in our knowledge of the political world.

Words at a convention can be taken anywhere. Many models there are, looking at the offspring. Many things can be said, many things can be spoken, many people can speak, and it's a choice, a rehearsed thing, but that you know when you are hearing someone whose speech you trust, words you trust, thoughts you trust. And all that can be up for grabs, when the dreaming person who is a potential voter listened, to the extent that they can listen. What to take away, what to take seriously? Where is the meat, where the gristle, where the healthy vegetable and the fiber, and where the bread?

About Me

Gandhi tells us to be the change we want to see in the world. I wanted to see a blog on writing. Not necessarily the craft stuff, the things you could learn in a classroom, but the basic matters (and mysteries) of creativity, depth and subject matter.
I am a veteran barman of Washington, DC. My novel, A Hero For Our Time, a modern retelling of Hamlet, is available on Amazon.com. (My thanks to Mr. Lermontov, God rest his soul, for allowing me to nod to his singular classic.)
What makes writing literature? Writing will always be an art form to honor.